Asiatic nomadic people that during the 9th century settled in the southern Russian and Ukrainian steppes, along the northern coast of the Black Sea, and during the 10th century occupied the region north of the Danube, becoming –within two centuries– one of the most important for the Byzantine foreign policy northern neighbours of the empire. During the 11th century their relations with the Byzantine empire were generally hostile and they constituted the empire’s most dangerous opponent in the north, a situation that was maintained up to the disappearance of this people from the limelight in the beginning of the 12th century.